You got lucky. CNN was posting video clips to their website as they got them in. By 9:30 their webpage had slowed to such a crawl even their ads were having trouble loading.
As early as I can recall on that morning, CNN had taken down their website and replaced it with a large text link and a picture with a breif blurb. For most of the day it remained an extremely simplistic website with primarily textual content. Video clips were sparse, there were a few pictures, but no ads until mid-late afternoon. By late afternoon they'd re-designed their main page to include all those excellent titles they gave the day ("Attack On America!", "America Under Attack!", etc.) and lots of pictures, snippets, and almost all of the links/sections were about the attack, and the ads had returned.
I am confused, but not about the standard x86 POST sequence, thank you very much. When this particular partition does not exist on an old(er) Compaq, the system does not function.
The BIOS itself is still in ROM. If the BIOS was only on disk, you'd have a Catch-22; the BIOS would be needed to load itself from disk.
Near as I can tell, they DO perform a catch-22 like operation, which is why it can take as many as five attempts to install the 'BIOS' setup partition (you did notice that I quoted it in my original post, didn't you?). I despise working on these Compaqs, because I'd never be able to charge customers the actual amount of labour required to get them up and running again. Finding the disks can be a nightmare unto itself, and getting them to apply is another headache altogether. Talking to Compaq support is like asking your dog for assistance (although in some cases I think our dog would be of more help).
(Well, I guess the system could have a second BIOS in ROM to load the first one from disk, but then, what would be the point of the BIOS on disk if there was already one in ROM?)
The whole point of my post was that a) it is possible to require a hard drive to enter your system's setup, and b) that Compaq systems did not make any sense (except, I suppose, to a Compaq engineer).
Thankfully they've changed the way it works to an actual CMOS chip, with no apparent interaction with the HDD itself.
I've got an old(er) Presario in my workroom at home, and I'd be glad to ship it to you if you're willing to foot the S&H (a little strapped for spare cash right now). It's got no HDD or RAM, so it only weighs in at about 50lbs.;)
CMOS stands for Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (if I remember correctly), which is a type of memory technology used in computers;
Actually, it's a semi-conductor (chip) planted on the motherboard, which stores the system settings, date, and time. There are several ways to test this theory;
Pull the CMOS reset jumper (thereby disconnecting the battery circuit)
Pull the CMOS battery
Pull the CMOS chip itself (thereby disconnecting it from the battery)
All methods will, with varying degrees of success, clear the CMOS settings. Providing you don't bend any pins in the process, your computer should continue to function as normal after you've re-assembled and re-configured it.
For the record, NVRAM is a different technology altogether. NVRAM does not require power to sustain its settings ("Non-Volatile RAM") and is very expensive per MB. It resembles a stick of RAM, rather than a semiconductor chip. Cisco routers make use of NVRAM, and I've held it in my hands many times over (often while trying to justify through a school board that it would behoove them to spend the money to upgrade the lab routers so that the students could use the new IOS, which they had already paid for but could not use. For the record, one copy of the IOS cost more than the NVRAM would cost for all the lab's routers)
Let's drop all these pretences that smoking tobacco and littering are "ok" because "everybody does it" or some other pathetic excuse, shall we?
I'm not sure where this is coming from. Perhaps you're reading into my words.
You are a drug addict.
Only to caffeine.:) (For the record, I quit smoking in March of 2000 after about 8-10 years)
That does *not* mean that you have the *right* to feed your addiction whenever and however it pleases you. Welcome to modern society.
I'm not asking for "whenever, wherever". All I'm saying is that open are environments and private establishments (where smoking is considered a normal course of action) should not prohibit smoking. As I said before, most of the bars in the Durham Region are split to the order of 70/30 smoking/non-smoking; only because there has to be a non-smoking area by law, but more often than not the non-smoking areas are so under populated the smoking area winds up stealing chairs and tables from it to their own area.
A coffee shop I used to frequent (it was the closest to where I worked at the time) had about 15 tables in the smoking section, and 3 in the non-smoking section. The non-smoking tables were so commonly empty, smokers just sat there anyways. See, since there were no non-smokers to complain, there was no problem. When non-smokers came in, they were left alone in their little corner.
Other coffee shops are, in some case, by choice non-smoking and they attract the non-smoking consumer base. Fantastic! All the power to them! Way to go Mr. Horton! But what would happen to the above coffee shop if their clientelle were suddenly told that they were no longer allowed to smoke amongst one another? Moreover, what would be the POINT? The employees smoked, the cooks smoked, the customers smoked. It's not like new applicants or customers could possibly be surprised that there were so many smokers - they were always in there.
We don't want tobacco smokers polluting the air and littering with their butts ( regardless of the "lack of ashtrays" or other lame excuses) anymore than we want people consuming alchohol and littering with their bottles/cans, or smoking crack and littering with their crackpipes.
Could you raise that strawman just a little bit higher? There, now I can see its shoes; thanks.
People were upset about litter, so garbage cans were installed two per city block, and every few dozen metres along most park/lakefront walkways. Why can't they do the same with ashtrays? Matter of fact, the Pickering Town Centre used to have these great garbage can units that had a sand-filled ashtray built right into the top. The lid of the garbage can folded up and over it to access the trash bag, and with a scoop (a la kitty litter scoop) through the sand would rid it of all (or most) of the butts.
While it should be terribly obvious, I'll respond to the remainder of your point anyways. Smokers don't become irate, increasingly over stimulated, or angry when they consume their drug of choice. They don't tend to vomit (first-time inhaling is another story) or pass out from smoking. There is a reason we don't allow the consumption of alcohol in public, and for all those reasons, crack is about 100 times worse.
Let's face it - probably half the population in urban centres smokes. This is not a majority vs. minority argument, because even if smokers are in a minority it's a very slim one. People voluntarily purchase and consume these products, and in the past few decades people can't possibly claim to NOT realize the health implications of smoking. I've spoken with WWII vets who recall talking about "coffin nails" back in the 40's.
That does *not* mean that you have the *right* to feed your addiction whenever and however it pleases you. Welcome to modern society.
Smoking, much like drinking, is a social activity. Welcome to reality.
This is a *choice* that *you made* to start smoking. If you need ( because of your addiction ) to not go in public because you can't go that long without feeding your addiction, so be it. You have the right to stay home.
Not if the extreme left have their way. If there are any minors living in your home, you can't even smoke there.
As a business owner, I have the right to decide what type of environment I want to offer. If I owned a bar and decided that it was going to be a smoking establishment, that's my decision. If you don't like it, you're free to go down the street to a micro-brewery and drink there instead. You have that right.
Quite simply that is not an acceptable state for a piece of hardware you paid a good chunk of cash to be in, without any hardware problems (eg it was that way when it left the factory), with no recorse offered
LOL.. This is the same corporation that told a company they could either pay $480 per laptop to recover a lost startup password, or throw away the units.
For the record, last time I checked a dozen ThinkPads remain in a pile with an uncertain future.
Not being able to get into the BIOS or updating the BIOS has nothing to do with the OS installed. If you still think it does, then take the hard drive out and try to flash the BIOS.
Tell that to Compaq. (Hint: BIOS stored in ~4MB partition on HDD. Inaccessable without the HDD. HDD upgrade or new partition table = having to locate/download three floppy disk images from Compaq and re-create the 'BIOS' partition).
What you may be thinking of is the CMOS - which is in and of itself a separate piece of hardware.
There are rules on these things in the US. There aren't that many. Basically it comes down to not discriminating based on race, or religion. And not to discriminate based on sex unless you have a reason; nor old age or disability if it can be accomidated for at minimal cost.
But re-designing a corporate website sounds like it will come to somewhat more than 'minimal cost'.
I've seen the number $2000 tossed around
$2k buys a 15-page small business website. This is an airline we're talking about here with a (presumably) complex online ordering system. We're talking tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to re-design the whole thing, and in all likelyhood, compromise in some way or another to accomodate the blind.
or the Boy Scouts of America
{twitch} Don't remind me. Here in Canada, it's now (supposed to be) called "Scouts". See, it's discrimination to disallow females from entering a group, but acceptable for a female group to disallow males to enter their group. See, if a single female applies to a troop, the onus is then on the leaders to find a female leader, and change campsite layouts. See, females must have their own, separate bathroom facilities, and female tents must be no less than 60 feet away from the male tents. When you're in the bush and your toilet is a trowel and TP in a baggie, you keep your tents in a close circle (or shelters, if we're being really mean to the guys..er.. scouts) these things become difficult. See, if there are two-three members of the group seperated by 60 feet, they become vulnerable targets for wild animals.
I guess you're too lazy to put the butts in your pocket and throw them out when you find a trash can, huh?
You're aware that these things are on fire, right?:)
And you're right, smokers shouldn't have rights. I don't have the right to go into a building and start spraying noxious chemicals, so why should you have the right to foul up everybody else's air?
We're not talking about walking into just any building - we're talking about smoking in open air, or about smoking in buildings which have already been designated as 'smoking'. Come on, do you really expect to go to a bar and NOT be in a smoke-filled room? Sure, there are non-smoking 'specialty bars' (I think they call them "micro-breweries". Ask Mr. Leary how he feels about those.;) ), but I live in a blue-collar town. Most of the places I enjoy are atleast partially (often the majority of the customers) smoking establishments.
I believe it's up to the owner of the building to decide what people can do with the air in their place of residence or business. Likewise, it's your right as a non-smoker to patronize non-smoking establishments.
Now please, find another table. My friend here is smoking, and we were here first.
However, the black officer failed his psyche exam, while the white officer went clean through. So what happened? The state told the PPD to throw out their psyche evaluations because they *obviously* discriminate.
This rings of the debate 'to lower, or not to lower fire fighter standards in order to hire more women?' to which my answer has always been;
Can a fire fighter lift my unconscious 240lb carcass out of my bed, up a flight of stairs, and out the door? If she can only bench 150, sorry, but she just doesn't qualify in my book.
If a person doesn't pass a psych exam for a job (especially one where they carry a gun, handle illicit goods/money, etc.), perhaps they should investigate another line of work.
So you thought that it was perfectly fine that many businesses in the American South discriminated against blacks until our government started legislating against it, hm?
That's a side-issue. If the American South hadn't shipped so many blacks over from Africa and enslaved them, it wouldn't have really been an issue. Had migration been permitted to happen on its own, and had slavery not been permitted in the first place (the idea of a human owning another against their will is quite to the extreme of bad taste, IMHO) I doubt such a wide-spread discrimination effort would have taken place. Instead, we had entire generations of people who thought of black people as property - what did you expect, that they'd opt to sit in a restaurant with something they saw as sub-human? Something to be bought and sold? They didn't eat with their cows either now, did they?
(No, I'm not comparing blacks to cows, I'm driving at the 'they're both property' mentality that many southern US white people had at the time during and after slavery)
My experience is that smokers don't tend to believe that anyone else has any rights.
My experience as a (former) smoker taught me that a lot of non-smokers don't believe that smokers should have rights. For example, the right not to be yelled at, or have people walk up to you and demand that you 'put that filthy thing out!'
The latest 'thing', of course, is the notion that smokers shouldn't have the right to eat, drink, and smoke in restaurants/bars (conversely, that restaurants and bars shouldn't be allowed to allow smoking).
There are inconsiderate people everywhere. Some of them happen to smoke. Please don't paint all smokers with the same brush.
(For the record, there is a significant lack of ash trays on streets in most cities.)
Many Asian companies will only hire Asians (preference to family members), partly because their upbringing teaches them to stick together. If my upbringing taught me to stick together with white people in the same fashion, I'd be labelled as a racist.
Any why should companies have to hire blacks and women if they don't want to?
Why should the company hire ANYONE that they don't want to?
And of course, Affirmative Action will ensure that companies get the best person for the job, right? If one qualified white man and six unqualified black men/women apply for an opening - tell me why on Earth the white man shouldn't be hired. More realistically, what if one of the applicants just happened to have three months more experience than the next runner up, with all the education an employer could ever ask for? Shouldn't they be hired, regardless of what they look like?
Why aren't companies allowed to make decisions that will do them the most good? Isn't it the right of a private company to hire 1000 incompetent white men if they so desire?
I assume that this fellow doesn't have one of those scooters that can climb stairs. So he is using a federally-mandated ramp to access your store, a ramp that would not otherwise exist because it doesn't make economic sense to cater to 0.5% or less of your customer base.
We're at sidewalk level, so there's no need for a ramp. In our previous location, however, we were two stories above ground with a choice of two steep staircases and no elevator. We weren't able to accomodate people who required scooters, so we lost their business. We did not, however, change locales just to accomodate scooters, we changed because we wanted more exposure, hence more business, meaning more money. People who use scooters are only one aspect of that - they're no more or less valuable to us than any other of our customers.
Okay, I'm not an American so maybe i'm just missing something fundamental here, but... but surely Southwest Airlines isn't a publicaly provided service?
This is what I've been wondering through this thread. To what degree should a PRIVATE firm be forced to change their business to accomodate customers in sectors they just might not want to accomodate?
Let's say my boss didn't like Ford motor products. (We do live in a GM town, it's feasible). Shouldn't it be his right as a business owner to refuse to sell computers to Ford employees, or people who drive Ford vehicles? What if he didn't like smokers so much that he decided not to service or sell to them?
If he was a fundamentalist christian and decided not to sell computers to people who hadn't heard the word, isn't that his right? On the flip-side, if he was a devout atheist and didn't care to sell to religious people, can't he?
(I'm so going to be attacked for this, but... ) why can't he refuse to sell to black people, or Indians, or any other cultural group? (Since our area is so multi-cultural, it would be suicide, but still)
Now if he doesn't want to go through the difficulty of accomodating people with physical disabilities, why should he? Do they actually have a right to buy a computer from us?
We get no public funding, and in fact send the governments (federal and provincial) several rather tidy cheques every few months, and our landlord sends them a set of fairly large property tax cheques per year to boot.
(My thoughts, of course, are my own. Neither I or my employer discriminate against anybody, or any group of people.)
I know for a fact that in St. Louis, Missouri - my bank (Firstar) has changed around the prompts on their machines numerous times in just the last 6 months or so.
My bank recently did the same thing, which isn't to say anything about my other bank which recently merged with another large Canadian bank (TD + Canada Trust, now "TD Canada Trust"), which meant the interfaces were merged to form one 'best of both worlds' interface.
No, it would be like you not being able to walk into Target because you can't fit through the door.
So where's the reasonable effort come into play? If a person is, say, 7'6" tall (not altogether uncommon - look at basketball players, or even people too tall to play) or 500lbs and can't fit through our store's door (an old building, the door is only something like 78" tall by about 28" wide) - can they sue us, or would it be more reasonable that they drive to our competition who may or may not have larger doors?
Am I personally responsible for the size of a person? Moreover, are we to describe each product on the shelf to a blind person? Do we require an employee who can sign for the deaf? (Would writing on paper suffice?) Since we're in an officially bi-lingual nation, we should already have a francophone on the staff - what if we can't find a francophone who's at all useful in the computer sales/service industry?
Essentially, if we grow to beyond a certain size, we would find ourselves facing legislated growing pains. Our staff could potentially become so cumbersome, and carry so much potential for employees who could, potentially, cost rather than earn money for the company - why, to cater to 0.5% or less of our customer base?
We have customers with Parkinsons, alzheimers, muscular dystrophy, and one or two who are (atleast partially) deaf. We do just fine, because they insist that we not give them special treatment. One very regular customer who requires an electric scooter for mobility would beat me senseless if I held the door for him, or did anything I wouldn't do for any of our perfectly healthy customers.
So what we have are a small percentage of a very small percentage of people who've decided that the world should bend over backwards for them because something about them is deficient (sorry, I know we're not supposed to say that, but having a defecet in one of our human abilities is a fact, not an insult or a scorn).
Fact: We're all different. We all have strengths and weaknesses. Some have physical and mental weaknesses, some have social, some require mobility assistance, some have to find other (non-vocal) methods of communication. If every company had to cater to the independant needs and desires of every type of difference/deficiency, capitalism would fall on its ears and our society would collapse.
Quit trying to make it a moral issue. It is an issue of choice. People have the right to use what they want. If you don't like that then maybe you are more like the closed source software houses than you wish to admit.
You're thinking in the microcosmic view of the situation. Essentially, you're considering a single person performing a single task. You have to think of the people who make the software industry work - business. The home "market" essentially only exists to ensure that home users will be comfortable with the offerings that mega software corporations sell to business (small and large - moreso large) when they go to work.
Decisions made by people in the software industry affect millions of people and tens, even hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Consider the release of Microsoft Windows 95. IBM (a company not without its own monopolistic history, but I digress) was initially going to promote OS/2 alongside Win'95, but Microsoft did not approve of this. At the last minute before the release, IBM was presented with an ultimatum; Win'95 or nothing. Since Win'95 was the current 'thing to have', it would have been a crippling blow for the (current) industry leading hardware manufacturer to ship PCs without it.
Now consider things that retroactively cost billions - Melissa shut down corporations and wreaked havoc for weeks. Since people did not have any access to the code that makes the affected products 'tick' (ie; Outlook (Express)), they were forced to sit on their hands and wait for a proprietary solution.
Proprietary products, as it's been pointed out in the past, tend to limit their users to only their own products. Concealment of APIs to make it difficult for competitors to integrate, making significant changes to the API and/or protocols without proper documentation so that competitors will find their products behind the times, etc..
Proprietary software licenses tend to become progressively more restrictive, rather than less. Restricting a user's rights to use the other products and (digital) media they already own, for one thing. Restricting the types of files they are permitted to store locally and share with others. Restricting who they may converse with online, and allowing corporations and government bodies a peek into what you're doing on your computer - in the interests of preventing theft of "Intellectual Property" and terrorism, of course.
Free software is a moral issue. Don't try to make it less of one; you're only playing into the hands of the corporations.
For a good read on a possible free-software-free future, head on over to read this fine essay.
Regarding phoning that number, I'm not sure what more they could have to offer. They gave us the five W's along with the bonus "How". There's, like, more to the story? Was child pornography discovered durnig his PrintScreen adventure? Did they notice unscrupulous ICQ contacts peeking out from behind his e-book reader?
Ask yourself this question: What would you rather have, a justice system where only some of the guilty people are punished but no innocent people; or, all the guilty people are punished but consequently some of the innocent people are too. Personally I want to live in a world where the first model is prevelant.
The unfortunate part of that, however, is the fact that so many actually guilty criminals have used these technicalities to get around the system. How many times have police officers (only human, etc..) bungled a search warrant, or mis-timed (or forgotten) miranda rights (even though so many criminals know them by heart), or DNA, photographic, video, or other evidence either becomes tarnished (human error, etc.), or inadmissable due to some legal technicality?
Of course, the other end of the spectrum isn't perfect either. There have been stories too numerous to comprehend of innocent people who've spent decades in prison.
No system is perfect (one person's utopia is another person's dystopia, etc..), but I think the North American justice system is overdue for a significant overhaul.
Let the Russian government and foreign policy pundits work this one out. This is nothing like the Skylarov case. These were real criminals committing real crimes.
So what we have here is a case of the US government overstepping their bounds, but it led to the capture and arrest of a genuine criminal. This is certainly a tough one. I'm all for dropping some of the technicalities that allow so many criminals to go free, but then we'd only find ourselves in need of people to police the police, so to speak.
In retrospect, the FBI perhaps could (should!) have cooperated with the Russian officials, and just might have found themselves with permission to raid the people's computers after sharing evidence. Heck, maybe the Russian officials would have done it for them.
{down with US foreign policy, aggressive, abusive, obnoxious, etc. rant goes here}
I just finally got the page rank that I deserve. I'm very happy with the change.
My site has been relegated to the bottom of the second page of results. Ho-hum.. It could be due to the switchover from 'free' dynamic hosting providers to my own domain name, or it could be because of a PageRank switchover; who knows? Such is the dynamic nature of the Internet, I suppose.
Incidentally, does anybody have any sort of listing of search terms that turn up broken pages, porn/spam sites, etc..?
Yes, Google would have unearthed the answer to this question, as would any equipment manual, manufacturer (cable or equipment) or signal specification (IEEE, EIA/TIA, etc.). This individual would have known where to find all of this information had he taken even a six-week introductory course to networking. "This is a picture of a network. These are standards bodies. Any questions? Here's your certification."
But no, this individual decided instead to post to Slashdot and demonstrate both his technical and linguistic incompetence.
You'll pardon me if I take two moments to feel sorry for his company for hiring him, then another moment to take it back, considering they haven't realized that he's not systems administrator material and canned his sorry ass in order to open up a job for one of the many knowledgeable geeks who are presently in desperate need of employment.
Slashdot Mirror
Thankfully they've changed the way it works to an actual CMOS chip, with no apparent interaction with the HDD itself.
I've got an old(er) Presario in my workroom at home, and I'd be glad to ship it to you if you're willing to foot the S&H (a little strapped for spare cash right now). It's got no HDD or RAM, so it only weighs in at about 50lbs. ;)
Actually, it's a semi-conductor (chip) planted on the motherboard, which stores the system settings, date, and time. There are several ways to test this theory;All methods will, with varying degrees of success, clear the CMOS settings. Providing you don't bend any pins in the process, your computer should continue to function as normal after you've re-assembled and re-configured it.
For the record, NVRAM is a different technology altogether. NVRAM does not require power to sustain its settings ("Non-Volatile RAM") and is very expensive per MB. It resembles a stick of RAM, rather than a semiconductor chip. Cisco routers make use of NVRAM, and I've held it in my hands many times over (often while trying to justify through a school board that it would behoove them to spend the money to upgrade the lab routers so that the students could use the new IOS, which they had already paid for but could not use. For the record, one copy of the IOS cost more than the NVRAM would cost for all the lab's routers)
A coffee shop I used to frequent (it was the closest to where I worked at the time) had about 15 tables in the smoking section, and 3 in the non-smoking section. The non-smoking tables were so commonly empty, smokers just sat there anyways. See, since there were no non-smokers to complain, there was no problem. When non-smokers came in, they were left alone in their little corner.
Other coffee shops are, in some case, by choice non-smoking and they attract the non-smoking consumer base. Fantastic! All the power to them! Way to go Mr. Horton! But what would happen to the above coffee shop if their clientelle were suddenly told that they were no longer allowed to smoke amongst one another? Moreover, what would be the POINT? The employees smoked, the cooks smoked, the customers smoked. It's not like new applicants or customers could possibly be surprised that there were so many smokers - they were always in there.
Could you raise that strawman just a little bit higher? There, now I can see its shoes; thanks.People were upset about litter, so garbage cans were installed two per city block, and every few dozen metres along most park/lakefront walkways. Why can't they do the same with ashtrays? Matter of fact, the Pickering Town Centre used to have these great garbage can units that had a sand-filled ashtray built right into the top. The lid of the garbage can folded up and over it to access the trash bag, and with a scoop (a la kitty litter scoop) through the sand would rid it of all (or most) of the butts.
While it should be terribly obvious, I'll respond to the remainder of your point anyways. Smokers don't become irate, increasingly over stimulated, or angry when they consume their drug of choice. They don't tend to vomit (first-time inhaling is another story) or pass out from smoking. There is a reason we don't allow the consumption of alcohol in public, and for all those reasons, crack is about 100 times worse.
Let's face it - probably half the population in urban centres smokes. This is not a majority vs. minority argument, because even if smokers are in a minority it's a very slim one. People voluntarily purchase and consume these products, and in the past few decades people can't possibly claim to NOT realize the health implications of smoking. I've spoken with WWII vets who recall talking about "coffin nails" back in the 40's.
Smoking, much like drinking, is a social activity. Welcome to reality. Not if the extreme left have their way. If there are any minors living in your home, you can't even smoke there.As a business owner, I have the right to decide what type of environment I want to offer. If I owned a bar and decided that it was going to be a smoking establishment, that's my decision. If you don't like it, you're free to go down the street to a micro-brewery and drink there instead. You have that right.
"Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs"
Personally, I'd expect the person to phone the airline before they phoned a lawyer.
For the record, last time I checked a dozen ThinkPads remain in a pile with an uncertain future.
What you may be thinking of is the CMOS - which is in and of itself a separate piece of hardware.
I believe it's up to the owner of the building to decide what people can do with the air in their place of residence or business. Likewise, it's your right as a non-smoker to patronize non-smoking establishments.
Now please, find another table. My friend here is smoking, and we were here first.
Can a fire fighter lift my unconscious 240lb carcass out of my bed, up a flight of stairs, and out the door? If she can only bench 150, sorry, but she just doesn't qualify in my book.
If a person doesn't pass a psych exam for a job (especially one where they carry a gun, handle illicit goods/money, etc.), perhaps they should investigate another line of work.
(No, I'm not comparing blacks to cows, I'm driving at the 'they're both property' mentality that many southern US white people had at the time during and after slavery)
The latest 'thing', of course, is the notion that smokers shouldn't have the right to eat, drink, and smoke in restaurants/bars (conversely, that restaurants and bars shouldn't be allowed to allow smoking).
There are inconsiderate people everywhere. Some of them happen to smoke. Please don't paint all smokers with the same brush.
(For the record, there is a significant lack of ash trays on streets in most cities.)
All in all, all I have to say is {sigh}
And of course, Affirmative Action will ensure that companies get the best person for the job, right? If one qualified white man and six unqualified black men/women apply for an opening - tell me why on Earth the white man shouldn't be hired. More realistically, what if one of the applicants just happened to have three months more experience than the next runner up, with all the education an employer could ever ask for? Shouldn't they be hired, regardless of what they look like?
Why aren't companies allowed to make decisions that will do them the most good? Isn't it the right of a private company to hire 1000 incompetent white men if they so desire?
Let's say my boss didn't like Ford motor products. (We do live in a GM town, it's feasible). Shouldn't it be his right as a business owner to refuse to sell computers to Ford employees, or people who drive Ford vehicles? What if he didn't like smokers so much that he decided not to service or sell to them?
If he was a fundamentalist christian and decided not to sell computers to people who hadn't heard the word, isn't that his right? On the flip-side, if he was a devout atheist and didn't care to sell to religious people, can't he?
(I'm so going to be attacked for this, but ... ) why can't he refuse to sell to black people, or Indians, or any other cultural group? (Since our area is so multi-cultural, it would be suicide, but still)
Now if he doesn't want to go through the difficulty of accomodating people with physical disabilities, why should he? Do they actually have a right to buy a computer from us?
We get no public funding, and in fact send the governments (federal and provincial) several rather tidy cheques every few months, and our landlord sends them a set of fairly large property tax cheques per year to boot.
(My thoughts, of course, are my own. Neither I or my employer discriminate against anybody, or any group of people.)
Am I personally responsible for the size of a person? Moreover, are we to describe each product on the shelf to a blind person? Do we require an employee who can sign for the deaf? (Would writing on paper suffice?) Since we're in an officially bi-lingual nation, we should already have a francophone on the staff - what if we can't find a francophone who's at all useful in the computer sales/service industry?
Essentially, if we grow to beyond a certain size, we would find ourselves facing legislated growing pains. Our staff could potentially become so cumbersome, and carry so much potential for employees who could, potentially, cost rather than earn money for the company - why, to cater to 0.5% or less of our customer base?
We have customers with Parkinsons, alzheimers, muscular dystrophy, and one or two who are (atleast partially) deaf. We do just fine, because they insist that we not give them special treatment. One very regular customer who requires an electric scooter for mobility would beat me senseless if I held the door for him, or did anything I wouldn't do for any of our perfectly healthy customers.
So what we have are a small percentage of a very small percentage of people who've decided that the world should bend over backwards for them because something about them is deficient (sorry, I know we're not supposed to say that, but having a defecet in one of our human abilities is a fact, not an insult or a scorn).
Fact: We're all different. We all have strengths and weaknesses. Some have physical and mental weaknesses, some have social, some require mobility assistance, some have to find other (non-vocal) methods of communication. If every company had to cater to the independant needs and desires of every type of difference/deficiency, capitalism would fall on its ears and our society would collapse.
Decisions made by people in the software industry affect millions of people and tens, even hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Consider the release of Microsoft Windows 95. IBM (a company not without its own monopolistic history, but I digress) was initially going to promote OS/2 alongside Win'95, but Microsoft did not approve of this. At the last minute before the release, IBM was presented with an ultimatum; Win'95 or nothing. Since Win'95 was the current 'thing to have', it would have been a crippling blow for the (current) industry leading hardware manufacturer to ship PCs without it.
Now consider things that retroactively cost billions - Melissa shut down corporations and wreaked havoc for weeks. Since people did not have any access to the code that makes the affected products 'tick' (ie; Outlook (Express)), they were forced to sit on their hands and wait for a proprietary solution.
Proprietary products, as it's been pointed out in the past, tend to limit their users to only their own products. Concealment of APIs to make it difficult for competitors to integrate, making significant changes to the API and/or protocols without proper documentation so that competitors will find their products behind the times, etc..
Proprietary software licenses tend to become progressively more restrictive, rather than less. Restricting a user's rights to use the other products and (digital) media they already own, for one thing. Restricting the types of files they are permitted to store locally and share with others. Restricting who they may converse with online, and allowing corporations and government bodies a peek into what you're doing on your computer - in the interests of preventing theft of "Intellectual Property" and terrorism, of course.
Free software is a moral issue. Don't try to make it less of one; you're only playing into the hands of the corporations.
For a good read on a possible free-software-free future, head on over to read this fine essay.
Regarding phoning that number, I'm not sure what more they could have to offer. They gave us the five W's along with the bonus "How". There's, like, more to the story? Was child pornography discovered durnig his PrintScreen adventure? Did they notice unscrupulous ICQ contacts peeking out from behind his e-book reader?
Of course, the other end of the spectrum isn't perfect either. There have been stories too numerous to comprehend of innocent people who've spent decades in prison.
No system is perfect (one person's utopia is another person's dystopia, etc..), but I think the North American justice system is overdue for a significant overhaul.
In retrospect, the FBI perhaps could (should!) have cooperated with the Russian officials, and just might have found themselves with permission to raid the people's computers after sharing evidence. Heck, maybe the Russian officials would have done it for them.
{down with US foreign policy, aggressive, abusive, obnoxious, etc. rant goes here}
Incidentally, does anybody have any sort of listing of search terms that turn up broken pages, porn/spam sites, etc..?
So for GOD'S SAKE MAN, SMILE!
But no, this individual decided instead to post to Slashdot and demonstrate both his technical and linguistic incompetence.
You'll pardon me if I take two moments to feel sorry for his company for hiring him, then another moment to take it back, considering they haven't realized that he's not systems administrator material and canned his sorry ass in order to open up a job for one of the many knowledgeable geeks who are presently in desperate need of employment.